Classification

Description

An updated sudo package that fixes one security issue is now available for
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having moderate
security impact. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score,
which gives a detailed severity rating, is available from the CVE link in
the References section.

The sudo (superuser do) utility allows system administrators to give
certain users the ability to run commands as root.

The RHBA-2010:0212 sudo update released as part of Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5.5 added the ability to change the value of the ignore_dot option in the
"/etc/sudoers" configuration file. This ability introduced a regression in
the upstream fix for CVE-2010-0426. In configurations where the ignore_dot
option was set to off (the default is on for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
sudo package), a local user authorized to use the sudoedit pseudo-command
could possibly run arbitrary commands with the privileges of the users
sudoedit was authorized to run as. (CVE-2010-1163)

Red Hat would like to thank Todd C. Miller, the upstream sudo maintainer,
for responsibly reporting this issue. Upstream acknowledges Valerio
Costamagna as the original reporter.

Users of sudo should upgrade to this updated package, which contains a
backported patch to correct this issue.